Rhythm Tengoku is a pretty cool GBA rhythm game. It only came out in Japan, of course. We’re working to fix that. Not only do we have regular public releases, but they’re also fairly bug-free.

[note: This post was updated again on 9/23/12. The last few paragraphs are new.]

But all is not well in the Rhythm Tengoku translation. There’s two of us on the project, and neither of us are ROM hackers. The main text can be inserted without issue, thanks to Atlas and a script from pelrun and Spikeman. But there’s graphical text sprinkled throughout the game, and we don’t know how to edit it.

I can handle making new graphics, but I can’t edit graphics unless I know where they are in the ROM and what format they’re stored in. Even if I seek help with the graphics, I can’t tell someone to start working unless I have a method to insert custom graphics into the ROM.

Worse, it appears that graphics are in some kind of compressed format. Jeffman (Jeffman.net) took a cursory look at the ROM and came to that conclusion, as did Cracker (GBAtemp). (Or, Cracker guessed, they are encrypted.)

A decent starting place may be the Health and Safety screen. It is in a graphical format and starts up at the beginning of the game before anything happens. I.e., it’s ideal for breakpoints and changes to the ROM can easily be tested. I managed to change the background color to orange and I believe load some tiles in place of other ones, by corrupting the area of the ROM Jeffman pointed out to me as containing the Health screen. This Google Document contains every bit of technical information I could find.

Normal screen:

http://i.imgur.com/sihKH.png

Corrupted:

http://i.imgur.com/WS3XW.png

The main menu is an example of Japanese graphical text:

http://i.imgur.com/nAFOy.png

Also of note is CrystalTile2. It has a special setting for “Rhythm Heaven” (Rhythm Tengoku). However, almost all graphics don’t seem to be in this “Rhythm Heaven” format. It does work for editing fonts, though. Such usage is detailed here:

http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php/topic,14718.0.html

Y.S. made a few ROM hacks for Tengoku as well. Graphics-editing-wise, I think this video is the most relevant of his.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zezUFvBQRs#t=0m14s

That face that appears in the background of this hacked ROM doesn’t appear anywhere in the game. It’s possible this editing was more on the “Crystal Tile” format of graphics and not anything unique. But Y.S. seems to be a competent hacker… He posted these hacks (link is to a mirror on my own site) but none are related to graphics modification, unfortunately.

I’ve tried and failed to contact Y.S. He has been active recently on YouTube.

Finally, there’s ~4MB of free space at the end of the ROM. If replacement with an uncompressed format is an option, it’s still far better than nothing.

I’m not opposed to doing the work myself, I just have doubts on my technical skill (none) vs. the difficulty of hacking this game. Thanks for reading and have a nice day.

edit: I’ve been contacted by Auryn: “I just played the last 6 hours with your game and I believe I found where the problem is and I contacted CUE (a member of this forum) because he is probably the one that can solve your problem the fastest. As soon that i have a solution, i will tell you. Basically it should be only a matter of decompression/compression (I believe CUE tool would compress your file the right way but the decompressor has a problem. CT2 is no use because it’s a “normal” compression but a special write mode. If you has a solution to the decompressor, be ready to work with a bit less than 800 files (between graphics, tilemaps and palettes).”

• –

edit 9/23/12:

For good measure, here is Auryn’s compression theory that he was wrong about.

http://pastebin.com/0cSE5iQK

Here’s his third message to me:

I have a bad and a good and a bad again notice for you. The bad first: I was wrong with my compression teory. The good is that CUE found a pattern in that data, made a little desciption and he made a little program to extract some tile. The bad is that it’s not tested well and it’s not a complete program. Anyway make sure to credit CUE if you will release a patch someday.

Here is his message: To decode the graphics a programmer is needed. I’m not a GBA expert and I don’t have more time to expend in this game.

The health screen has 3 parts:

• tile encoded
• tile counts
• tile pattern (080D1AD60 or so, not tested)

Not full tested. I can extract the tiles 0×00 to 0×72 without problems, but the 0×73 is wrong.

080D1AD4C has 2 pointers:

• 080D1AABC, pointing at 08D1A330, the encoded tile data
• 080D1AACC, the encoded count data

The tileset is a 4bpp texture (16 colors), divided in blocks de 2 colors.

Eeach encoded data block is a 2bpp has:

• 1 byte with the foreground and background color
• 1 byte with the number of encoded words - 1
• the encoded words, low endian format)

Each encoded word has 2 bytes, each byte has 2 nibbles, each nible has 4 bits, each bit is the color defines in the first bit

The count data is a double byte blocks:

• 1st byte has the number of nibbles to copy
• 2nd byte has the number of nibbles to repeat

A tiny C program to extract some tiles:

http://pastebin.com/cgGN1d4R

Looking for some help with the sprites for my hack “Toad’s Trauma Show” It’s not alot of sprites because the only power up Toad will be able to use will be the Fire Flower.

The sprites are in the hack for Toad are from Wario’s Woods, if you’re think you’re up to please e-mail me or better yet PM me here. I’ll give you more details then.

• Googie

We translated nearly all menues, but the tool we have from our programmer is not handling the story files correctly.

We need someone to fix this.

The program is written in VB.NET, Source Code available.

If you can help contact us on the Project Site or write me a PM here.

Also we are in need of a program that can open the Images/Sprites of the Game because they also contain Japanese text.

If you have ASM knowledge this would be even better.

What we are basically looking for is a programmer that can help us with a few things but we have a good baseline to work from.

Help is much appreciated.

Hi, I started a translation project for a PSP game called Yuusha 30 Second (Half Minute Hero 2) and need help, mostly with the translation part.

Here’s the project’s site: http://hmh2translation.kumodori.com

I’ll keep using we, but really there’s just two of us right now. Neither of us know Japanese. So far, we’ve decompressed the game and extracted all files, including the raw text. We’ve also made a website to hopefully help with the translation process. We’re pretty passionate about this and are dedicated to seeing it through.

We’re really looking for Japanese to English translators. We’ve created a quick website to collaboratively translate the game. Unlike the first game, this one is a pretty full fledged RPG, so there is a lot of text. Dedicated translators would be best, but even people who just want to translate a few lines would be much appreciated. If you’re interested, please visit the project’s site.

We’re also looking for people to help with the rom hacking. So far it’s just me and I don’t have any experience doing it. Better tools to decompress and recompress the archive would be very helpful. If you can help with this, please take a look here to get started: http://hmh2translation.kumodori.com/romtools.html

If you don’t know what Half Minute Hero is, but like(d) playing the SNES/PSX era JRPGs, you should definitely give the game a try. (Don’t worry, it’s not grindy like a traditional JRPG.) You can play the first game on PSP or XBLA (maybe Steam soon.) It’s an homage/parody of the JRPG drama… in it, you have 30 seconds to level up, complete subquests, and kill the boss before they destroy the world. There’s a lot of humor and nostalgia, but it’s still a good game. It’s kind of a JRPG/casual/puzzle/action game hybrid. Where the first game is a take on NES type stories, the second game is a take on SNES/PSX era stories.

First off, I’m not really a ‘newb’ to ROM hacking in a sense. Mega Man X3 - Zero Project was my first official large project and was completed. Though buggy, it’s being redone with much more expansive ideas in mind.

I’ve worked and am still working on a Tales of Phantasia project which can be viewed on here as well.

But now comes the fun part!

I’m looking for someone that can help me in a step by step fashion or at least push to help understand more on adding a VWF into Mega Man X3. This games text routine seems a bit.. different from the usual as far as I can tell. There’s already a bit of data that tells how many letters should appear on the screen at once, which is probably something useful for the VWF implementation.

I’m asking for help as most of the VWF explanations are extremely complicated. The idea is simple, but how the coding and such is explained isn’t.. really helpful to someone new to something like that.

I’d be incredibly grateful for any help I could get on this as it would save plenty of room on dialogue and easily help expand it’s usefulness much more than normal.

I am already known for restoring the sound quality in Final Fantasy V and VI advance.

I now have another idea : Insert CD quality soundtrack from the Playstation version of the game into the SNES version.

The soundtrack has already be completely converted to BRR format and has been shrunk to fit in only 10MB, added to the 2MB the original game actually takes, that makes 12MB, the maximum standard cartridge size of a SNES game.

The problem is to insert the data into the game and making it work. The most difficult task will be to have the game stream data into the SPC700 in real time, and to hack the existing communication protocol with a new one.

I’m looking for someone who is familiar with the SNES hardware and the communication protocol between the sound processor SPC700 and the SNES’ main CPU. Ideally someone which is familiar with Mega Man X3 as well.

Thanks in advance.

Do you like Wizardry clones?

Yes you do, that was a rhetorical question.

The previously indie developer Experience (EXP) has been making quite a name for themselves lately with their Wizardrylikes. And they’re more than Wizardrylikes, they’re actually based, almost to the letter, on the Wizardry Xth series that was really popular in Japan on the PS2.

Now, take everything you love about those wonderful dungeon crawling turn-based games and add a Megaten-style atmosphere and you have Generation Xth.

GenX has three games in the series, plus a more recent spinoff called Meikyuu Cross Blood. EXP has also made a little game you may have heard of lately called Students of the Round - one of the best dungeon crawls I’ve played in recent memory - that got a 360 port and now, coming soon, a PSP port as well, not to mention a brand new game just announced today (Tsurugi no Machi to Ihoujin).

The first game is just about finished, but we may still need help on the programming and testing side of things!

If you’re interested, please e-mail me or hit up the project website at http://kudomuramasa.foramu.net !

Thanks!

I’ve hacked and updated Baseball Simulator 1.000 (Baseball Simulator 2012, IPS found here).

I’m looking for someone to aid me in overhauling the ROM’s Game Simulation Engine. During season play, when two COM teams face off, the game goes to a SportsCenter-style Box score while it simulates the game. This simulation takes literally 20 minutes to complete.

I’m wondering if there isn’t a way to speed up these COM vs COM simulations to make the process of playing a season more gamer-friendly (more like Tecmo Super Bowl). I believe there are simulation stats associated with each player: In the hex, there are 2 bytes of data separating a batter’s Home Run stats and the rest of their offensive statistics. Pitchers have the same two bytes of data that seems to do nothing during normal game play. My assumption is that these bytes relate to the game simulation process used in Season Mode.

Player stats begin at $3AD30, Pitcher stats start at $3C170, with each batter/pitcher getting 20 bytes of data. The bytes in question are bytes 4 and 5.

I’m hoping it would be something as simple as reducing a counting loop in the programming, but even that is beyond my skill at the moment. Any help in streamlining this process would be GREATLY appreciated.

Cheers!

I am looking for Japanese to English translators for a new Rockman EXE 4.5 translation project. This is my first real translation project, but I’ve been active in the MegaMan Battle Network hacking community for years and I have a lot of experience with GBA/NDS games.

Progress

• Currently, hacking, programming and graphics work is mostly done. You can see some in-game screenshots here: http://imgur.com/a/9JjeA
• Roughly 99% of all the text in the ROM has been extracted and can be viewed/edited with a specialized text editor I wrote. Adding text boxes and re-pointing are no problem. Here’s a screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/uLR5q.png
• As a proof-of-concept, all the text was run through Google Translate, with reasonable success (only a few crashes). Pics: http://imgur.com/a/peGxA
• A work-in-progress patch has been released with all the menus and important stuff translated. The source code is included, but a lot of things have been changed since then.

Current Team

• The current translating team consists of me (hacking/programming and editing/error checking), plus one other editor and one Japanese translator.
• We have our own hidden discussion board over at The Rockman EXE Zone community for team communication.
• We’re using Dropbox to sync files, so a Dropbox account is necessary.

Translating

• We’re looking for Japanese to English translators. Excellent English is not required; more important is being able to understand the Japanese text and convey subtleties.
• The goal is to produce a localization as close to the other English MMBN games as possible.
• Due to the nature of this game (you can play as 20+ different characters), it’s pretty text-heavy. We’re going to need more translators if we want to get this finished in a reasonable amount of time.

If you’d like to help out, here’s how to get in touch.

• E-mail: chocoreep31@gmail.com
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/Prof9
• IRC: You can usually find me in the RHDN IRC channel.
• PM: The Rockman EXE Zone, GBAtemp.net

If anyone is able to help out, that’d be great. Thanks in advance! Note: this project is unrelated to the old project found here: http://www.romhacking.net/translations/1066/

Hello.

I’ve been a huge fan of Seph’s and Euclid’s “Parallel Worlds” for very long and I’ve been interested in developing an own ALTTP hack. Only problem being that I know very little about coding and developing an engine to suit my needs, I’ve still been working on some very important basics for the game.

I know a lot of people get fed up with new releases of ALTTP rom hacks with a lack of work and soul put in to it. Some may lack graphics experience while others may lack of other things required to release a great ROM hack – or even start to think about throwing together a team to create a new one.

I know all about the hard work required at all departments to finish such a huge project but I still want to submit a help wanted ad.

My name is Fred aka Aeranima and I’d like to bring together ambitious programmers for a new TLOZ - ALTTP hack. I’m Swedish so excuse my poor english. :) However.

Project name: The Legend Of Zelda - Renascence Of Evil

I’ve been working on graphics for this hack for about 3 years now. I know a lot about the art-style with my 10 years of experience creating tile sets (both indoor and outdoor), boss-sprites, bg sheets, objects etc for ALTTP. Most of it because it’s fun to sit down and see what I can create next for a ALTTP hack.

I’d love to show you guys my work but since this ad couldn’t show my img-links I guess you have to rely on me telling you that “I know my shiet.” ^^ LOL.

Enough talking, here is what I have in mind for TLOZ - ROE…

• New Light/Dark Overworld.
• Original tile sets of ALTTP to keep the feeling of playing ALTTP.
• New Hyrule Castle tiles (exterior) and Dungeon(both interior and exterior) tile sets.
• Easy-to-Hard dungeon puzzles. I know “Parallel Worlds” wasn’t very nice to the player regarding this topic. ^^
• New/Old NPC’s. I want to implement animals such as dog and cat from Minish Cap to Kakariko Village too.
• New/Old items.
• New story introduction graphics with new cut scenes.
• New dungeon bosses.
• Nostalgic-to-play feeling.

The list continues and ends up very long but you can see where I am heading. Point is, I want to do a brand new ALTTP ROM-hack as a brand new game. I know it will require a lot of skills (both artistic and programistic) XD to accomplish this.

If you feel like you’d be interested, just let me know. I’ll be available at e-mail: Qu3-production@hotmail.com

Thanks for reading this ad. ^^ Sorry for the massive text…

Kind regards Fred aka Aeranima